Chapter 2 - The Best Medicine

Summary

Cicero, Lucretius, and Catullus employ the comic adulescens to examine love as a physical and mental disorder. According to David Konstan, the traditional Roman line held that “amor was tolerated in a young man, but that it was but a transient seizure which would not corrupt the responsibility of a Roman citizen (i.e., of an aristocrat) toward his republic, his family and his dignity.” Cicero and Lucretius both toe this line, using the comic adulescens to drive wayward Roman youths back into the fold to perform according to the conservative norms of their respective communities. Catullus, by contrast, explores the character from the perspective not of one trying to cure another but of a person going through the experience of the lover and trying to make sense of his complex and contradictory thoughts. In trying to think not with the comic adulescens but as him, Catullus displays something altogether new for a member of the Roman elite: a sustained interest in the potential interiority of individuals from Roman comedy and how their staged experiences might be used to reflect on personal struggles.